A Web 2.0 service idea
One of these days, someone should start a socially-based translation service for blogs.
You see, it’s not uncommon, this being the World Wide Web, to get incoming links from articles written in languages you don’t necessarily speak; for example, my recent post about accessibility got attention from a German-language blog and, sadly, I don’t understand more than a few words of the language (I also got linked up by a French-language blog, but I can get by in French).
So a pretty cool service might work like this:
- You sign up, and list the languages you can speak with sufficient fluency to translate.
- You earn “credits” for translating things for other people.
- You spend your “credits” to get things translated for you by others.
So, for example, I could translate a French blog post for a non-francophone who happened to be mentioned in it, and get a credit that I could use to have someone translate that German post for me.
And, of course, monoglots could have some other way to get into the system; maybe a paid system, maybe something else.
Any takers?
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August 28, 2006
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This would actually be pretty easy to put together using something like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, I think.
However…
There is a fallacy in thinking that speaking a language automatically makes one a translator (any more than having an internet connection makes one a Web designer). Translation is a craft, one that is sadly undervalued.
August 28, 2006
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While I’m sure Mr. Keith is correct, I still think something is better than nothing. And Babelfish is pretty much nothing. So, I say go for it. :)
August 29, 2006
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Well.
I think there’s a difference between professional-level translation services which operate under high standards, and “give me an idea of what this guy’s saying”. This would aim for the latter.
September 1, 2006
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Of course, when it’s your blog you want to get translated for others, you could also set up a wiki. Then, people who know both English and French, and feel comfortable translating, could simply translate your blog posts to French. And because it’s a wiki, it wouldn’t need sign up, and would therefore enable everyone to make a new translation or improve exisiting translations (which is important too: correcting spelling and grammar errors, typos, things that could be said better, etc.).